The wizard hesitated a moment. "Say, could i have one of those cows for my research? I would compensate you of course."
The farmer patted him on the back. "I wouldn't have gotten them back without your help, so go ahead! And you don't have to pay me,
just help out if somethin' like this happens again." The wizard gave a grateful smile.
"Thank you, this will be exceptionally helpful for my research." The farmer looked over at the cows. "So, wich one do you want?"
He squinted. "What kinda criteria are you lookin' for? Cause i think i could roughly tell you what most of them would be good at."
"I have my eye on the last one we caught. I vaguely felt unusually strong mana from it." The farmer turned to the wizard,
his eyes wide with shock. "Wait, are you tellin' me that the cow can do magic?!" The wizard laughed. "No, no definitely not."
It took him a moment to gather himself after being taken off guard by the farmer's words.
"You see, almost everything has mana, even rocks or grass." He pointed at a nearby stone.
"But the general rule is that, the more intelligent something is, the more mana it has. Of course there are exceptions to this rule.
I have even read about a civilization once that was exceptionally smart, but almost entirely incapable of using magic.
Something like that cow over there is the inverse of that. It is far less intelligent than us, but likely has more mana than most non-mages."
The farmer looked over at the cow with amazement in his eyes. "Isn't that somethin'..."
He trailed off and turned back to the wizard after a moment. "Well, that doesn't really matter to me, so i don't mind if you take her."
The two spoke for a while longer, before the wizard put the lead around Beth's neck again and left with her in tow.
It didn't take the wizard long to get back to his laboratory.
"Good that i prepared a place in advance..." He quietly muttered to himself, as he led Beth through the building,
into a room that had seemingly been repurposed to house an animal. He took the lead off of her and let her freely explore the room.
The wizard left after ensuring that there was nothing wrong, walked to a desk in the adjacent room and took out a few documents.
"Now, what should i work on?"